Novella Review: Two by Mark Tiedemann: "The Jazz Age" and "Exile's Grace"

Novella Review: Two by Mark Tiedemann: "The Jazz Age" and "Exile's Grace"

a review by Rich Horton

I'm continuing to look at some 2022 stories I had missed. So far they've all been novellas!

Mark W. Tiedemann had two novellas in Analog in 2022: "Exile's Grace" in the March/April issue, and "The Jazz Age" in November/December. He has had five stories overall in Analog in the past four years or so (with one other back in 2006) -- making him truly a member of the so-called Analog Mafia by now!

"Exile's Grace" is set at Karmeister's World, which is populated by a race, the Cloom, generally believed to be non-sapient. Quill's ship ends up laying over at the station there, as they need repairs, and another close station is closed. With a couple of weeks to cool his heels, he investigates a bit and finds, to his great surprise, that an old friend of his, Gel Willer, is a xenoarchaeologist -- and, more surprisingly still, she is the only one to have entered the enigmatic surface structure called "Ayer's Child". She emerged changed, and has stayed on Karmeister's World, keeping away from other humans while continuing to study the planet and the Cloom -- who themselves have changed ominously, becoming warlike.

Quill decides to try to contact Willer, who had been part of a group of spiritual seekers with him -- and with another man, Isher, who is also at Karmeister's and is one of a diverse group of people who idolize Willer, believing her time inside Ayer's Child has made her holy. Quill himself has turned in a different direction than Isher -- more or less abandoning his spiritual quest. But he takes the chance to illegally go down to the surface and meet Willer, who is willing to discuss her discoveries with him. Things are violently interrupted by a group of the Willer-fanatics, led by a sociopath with his own secret goals. Quill is tortured -- and when he manages to escape the only route he can take leads him inside Ayer's Child. 

The resolution -- turning on Quill's reaction to the same sort of revelation in Ayer's Child that Willer had, is a tad disappointing, but the story as a whole is intriguing. It's set in the same universe as Tiedemann's Secantis Sequence novels, as well as some stories from the 1990s, including at least one about Quill. Perhaps there will be more!

The other 2022 novella was still better, to my mind. "The Jazz Age" is set on Mars, some centuries in the future. Lerin Olva has been newly appointed head of his department in the bureau of Communications and Exocryptology. Their main focus is to better understand the language of the Trishti, aliens who had arrived decades earlier, promising humanity a place in the wider Galactic society once humans can develop a stardrive. Olva is struggling to adjust to his new position, and concerned that his wife resents the Trishti presence. And things get complicated when the head of the starship development project announces that they are ahead of schedule, and the stardrive is almost ready. 

Olva's wife, however, quickly realizes that the starship project cannot possibly be ready. And then, shockingly, the Trishti appear to be ready to leave. Panic sets in -- the starship head had made his announcement both for political advantage, and because he believed the Trishti would be motivated to help humans across the finish line. But they are saying that now that humans have succeeded, the Trishti can leave ... Meanwhile Olva is learning a lot of things he had been ignorant of: a sort of Trishti underground, for example, complete with Trishti/human musical collaboration. And some secrets his wife had of which he was unaware. And, finally, a key to more fully understand the Trishti religious document his department had been trying to translate comes to him.

The solution to all this is actually something fairly readily guessed (and it's not really the point of the story.) But the unveiling of all this is colorful and fun, and future Martian society depicted is neat, the aliens are a nice creation, and the conclusion that is, with difficulty, reached for is worthwhile and involving. Tiedemann's fairly traditional SFnal futures, both in his Secantis stories, and in this (which seems a standalone), are highly satisfying to a longtime SF reader like me, and they are in the service of character based stories with philosophical ambitions drawing both on the human characters and the SFnal furniture. Fun and thoughtful stuff!